School Administrator

High-impacting tutoring might also be implemented more widely in the district if students achieve substantial learning gains, as they have in schools across the country.

Research from the Stanford National Students Support accelerator shows that high-impact tutoring increased achievement by an average of three to 15 months of learning across grade levels. Also, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found tutoring provides consistent and substantial gains on learning outcomes, particularly when the specific characteristics of high-impact tutoring and implemented.

Arkansas is not alone in providing funds to cover tutoring for struggling students. Among the dozens of other states with similar initiatives are such neighbors as Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, and farther flung states like Colorado, Rhode Island and Minnesota, according to the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.

According to a research summary by the National Student Support Accelerator, tutoring can increase student achievement in reading and math in between three to 15 months of learning across grade levels. Additionally, a study that examined various interventions meant to improve academic achievement from students from low socioeconomic backgrounds found tutoring to be the most effective method, the summary states.

The literacy tutoring grants are one of two programs centered around tutoring established through LEARNS. The other is a high-impact tutoring program that offers grants to public school districts and open-enrollment public charters to administer high-impact tutoring programs in their schools.

The most recent of these, from researchers at Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative, examined math and reading tutoring programs in a large, urban district during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. Neither led to overall gains in academic achievement.

But when researchers dug deeper into the data, they identified implementation problems that could be driving these null effects.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence around tutoring in a post-COVID landscape that suggests the effectiveness of a program hinges on the nitty-gritty details of how it is run—how often students meet with their tutors, for instance, or whether lessons are tailored to their specific needs.

Studying these implementation details could help school systems build more effective tutoring initiatives in the long run, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, and the lead author on the SCALE paper.

Two studies from Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator released Wednesday used natural language processing technologies to review transcripts from tens of thousands of hours of virtual tutoring sessions. Their goal: to better understand exactly what happens between tutors and students in these sessions.

One study examines the impact of disruptions as revealed through tutor comments, such as “You can’t see me? I’m not sure why you can’t see me” or “Sorry. Did you say something? It was hard to hear.”

Researchers found that 19% of available time was lost to disruptions, whether from technological issues, distracted students, or background noise. Time lost to disruptions was even greater when tutors were working with more than one student, especially if one of the students entered the session late.